


Your Mission, Should You Choose To Accept It

by JohnAmendAll



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-12 22:46:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17476376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JohnAmendAll/pseuds/JohnAmendAll
Summary: You'd think that being dead, you could lie back and enjoy it. Where the Mistress is concerned, you'd be wrong.





	Your Mission, Should You Choose To Accept It

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thisbluespirit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisbluespirit/gifts).



> An Unconventional Courtship premise, of course:
>
>>   
> 149) Lying in Bed - Jo Leigh  
> [Karen Coltraine / Lucie Miller]  
> To find a blackmailer, ~~FBI~~ agent Lucie Miller is going undercover as part of a “couple” at an intimacy retreat. But when Lucie meets her “wife” she knows she's in big trouble - this investigation looks set to be one irresistible temptation!  
> 

"You know what?" Lucie Miller said. 

The woman who'd announced herself as the 'Mistress' raised an eyebrow. "Almost certainly," she said. "But you're going to tell me anyway, aren't you?" 

"Just now," Lucie went on, "I was thinking 'OK, I'm about to get blown to smithereens, but at least that means I won't have that Karen trying to snog me any more.'" She looked at the all-too-familiar figure of Karen sitting beside her. "S'pose it was too good to be true." 

"I wasn't trying to snog you!" Karen protested, jumping to her feet. She turned to the Mistress. "I was trying to get me own back on her!" 

"Same difference." The Mistress fixed Karen with an icy glare. "Sit down." 

"But..." 

" _Sit_." 

Reluctantly, Karen resumed her seat beside Lucie. 

The Mistress nodded. "Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin. And I don't want any more interruptions. Seb, show them where they're going." 

A section of wall behind her blanked out, then displayed a holographic image of a seaside resort. The light of two diamondlike suns caressed an azure sea, a crescent beach with whorls of multicoloured sand, a cluster of beautiful, intricate buildings seemingly carved from the living rock.

"The Herkalla Glosp centre on Ursa Minor Beta," Seb announced, sounding to Lucie's ears like a third-rate salesman trying to flog a particularly iffy timeshare. "The most luxurious couples therapy centre in the Seven Galaxies." The image changed, to show a gleaming room filled with exercise equipment. "With gym, spa, swimming pools, steam room, soft play area, etcetera, etcetera, you can perfect your bodies even as you strive to reassemble your shattered relationship." 

Lucie raised a hand. "Hang on, 'relationship'?" 

"Well spotted, Miss Marple," the Mistress said, rolling her eyes. "Or do I mean Miss Murray? Yes, as you have so _incisively_ deduced, you and your surly friend here will be posing as a young couple who find it difficult to get along with each other. Should be easy enough for the both of you." 

Lucie glanced at Karen, and found her thoughts echoed on the other girl's face. "I'm not pretending she's me girlfriend!" 

"Wife," Seb said helpfully. "I made a marriage certificate. It's very realistic." The holographic display showed a piece of gold-edged paper that looked as if it had been bombarded at random with various wedding-themed graphics. Nonetheless, it was just possible to make out, in elaborate cursive fonts, the words 'Karen Coltraine' and 'Lucie Miller', accompanied by squiggles that might have been signatures. 

"You want me to pretend I'm married to _her_?" Karen demanded. 

The Mistress gave her a bored look. "Technically, it wouldn't be pretending. If that thing's all it's cracked up to be, you two _are_ married." 

"OK." Lucie took a deep breath. "Why are you sending us there? It can't be just to watch us suffer." 

"Why not?" 

Lucie was still turning over possible answers to that question when Karen said "'Cos it'd be cheaper to watch us suffer right here." 

"Not bad." The Mistress sipped at her tea, then, without warning, hurled the cup at Karen, who barely dodged in time. It smashed against the back wall of the office. "Except I'm not interested in money. But..." she gestured vaguely at Lucie, seemingly unable to recall her name. "That one's right. There is more to it than that. I've heard tell someone's blackmailing the inmates. And whoever it is, I want them." 

The word 'why?' was on the tip of Lucie's tongue, but she remained silent. Somehow, she didn't think the Mistress was doing this out of any interest in justice. 

"So go there, do something stupid, get blackmailed, find out who's behind it, and let me know who it is," the Mistress went on. "Got that?" 

"Why us?" Karen asked, ducking slightly in case the answer involved more ballistic crockery. "Can't you go yourself?" 

"What did I just tell you step two of my master plan was?" 

"'Do something stupid'", Karen repeated. 

"Oh, hallelujah, she can listen and repeat simple sentences. Now I am exceptionally clever. I don't do stupid things. But you two? Darlings, you're humans. You do stupid things all the time. Now will you do this simple thing for me?" 

"We get a choice?" Lucie asked. 

"Well... not really." She leaned forward, and her smile was all teeth. "Do you want me to go into the alternatives? There might be crocodiles involved." 

Lucie briefly weighed the possible downside of going up against someone who seemed to know exactly the words to bring her out in a cold sweat, against that of spending a few days with Karen in what was basically a posh hotel. 

"I'll do it," she said. 

"Me too," Karen added, sounding as if she was tasting gall. 

"Right you are, then." Seb gave them both an encouraging smile. "You'll find all your luggage waiting for you. And if you've got anything to report, click your heels together three times and say 'There's no place like the Nethersphere.' Hold on tight." 

There was a momentary discontinuity, and then the chairs were sunloungers, there was a parasol overhead, and a table between them with two tall-stemmed glasses and a couple of iridescent rectangles of plastic. 

"What the fudge..." Lucie breathed. She looked across at Karen, who was now wearing a sparkly silver bikini and had a pair of sunglasses pushed back on her head. "OK, Miss Archnemesis, let's get some stuff clear." 

Karen's expression was truculent. "Why d'you think I'll do anything just 'cos you tell me to?" 

"Suit yourself. But it'll be easier for both of us if I don't shove your teeth out through the back of your head." 

"You and whose army?" 

Lucie clenched her fists. "Look, I'm just trying to say: We don't touch each other except when we've got to. We don't talk except when we've got to. And maybe— just maybe— we won't kill each other." 

"Except when we've got to," Karen said. 

Lucie stifled a reluctant snort of laughter. "Except when we've got to. Probably end up back in that Nethersphere thing if we do." 

"OK, deal." Karen took one of the glasses, and attempted a nonchalant sip. "Mind you, bet you a penny we'll have to kiss some time." 

"Bet you a penny you'll enjoy it if we do. You can't get me out of your head, can you? Or maybe it's not your head that's the problem." 

Karen threw the contents of the glass over Lucie. "Shut up!" She snatched up the other glass before Lucie could retrieve it. "No talking, right?" 

"What about no touching, then?" 

"Didn't touch you, did I?" 

Lucie sighed, and tried to wipe some of the cocktail — which had been both ice-cold and sticky — off her face. Somehow, she thought the hardest part of this assignment (or cruel game of the Mistress's, or whatever it actually was) would be getting through each minute without throwing her proposed ground rules to the winds and visiting horrible vengeance on Karen. Against that possibility, she wouldn't have bet even a single penny.


End file.
